I live in Norway, so I’m familiar with a lot of people switching over to electric cars. Many do indeed because of government incentives. However once people try electric cars, they are not going back.

To assume consumers don’t really care and that this is only about the media center is pure nonsense. I cannot believe anyone would articulate it’s that way other than because they got something to sell.

I listen to people telling me why they’re not switching back. It’s not because of some fricken media center. It is because of all the advantages of electric cars: much less maintenance. Instant acceleration. More storage space. Not having to go to the gas station.

Ironically the last part is something people often don’t take into account. Charging is viewed as a disadvantage of an electric car.

However for every day life, it is much easier to just plug in your charger at home and charge overnight than having to take detours to the gas station.

If Toyota had interviewed people who have tried both gasoline and electric cars, then I don’t think they would be advocating a hybrid future.

Although there is one type of hybrid cart I think would’ve been really neat: The Steam Electric hybrid car.

Modern steam engines are compact and kind of run on almost any fuel. They also burn a much cleaner than internal combustion engines. The downside is to slow start up, but with a hybrid car this doesn’t matter. The steam engine would only be used to charge the battery anyway.